“As you get older you will become less resilient,” the psychologist said. “It comes with the territory.”
The territory, of course, is the backdrop of my life, my pendulum of emotions, my tunnel visions and visions of grandeur, days of nightmares and nights of daydreams. I have the panopoly of symptoms comprising bipolar disorder and bipolar persons don’t get better. She was reminding me. Again.
But there are other voices rumbling in the zeitgeist. There are other movements afoot, challenges to her thinking. There are stories of remission and recovery.
Her outlook is not personal opinion but standard professional assumptions of this day and age in psychiatry. So my care plan is to keep me on medication and in cognitive behavioral therapy until I die. Care plans are defined by the insurance company and the doctor. In the best case, the patient participates in the planning; compliance by the patient is the only way the plan can be executed.
Nutrition and Mental Illness, An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry, by Carl C. Pfeiffer, Ph.D, M.D., dedicates his book in part to “The many patients who have died or are mentally crippled because of lack of nutritional treatment…”. The UltraMind Solution, Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First, by Mark Hyman, M.D., posits that “mental disorders” and “brain disorders” are simply the names of common responses our bodies have to a variety of insults and deficiencies.”
After a horrific breakdown in 2004 I was strictly compliant. I was fired from my job and spent six months of my life with only one goal: Recovery. To never, ever, ever be manic again. I took whatever medication the psychiatrist prescribed. I reported on my feelings, my moods, my movements, my actions, my relationships, my blood levels and my sex drive. I strove to sleep, exercise and eat in compliance with the regimen.
And I got better. So much better that I began to work; I faltered badly and cut back to working part time. I got better. For a few years, I survived, but then the stress of working, even part time, was more than I could handle and I eventually accepted retirement on disability nearly two years ago. And I got better.
I wrote my book, View from the Rollercoaster, Unsteady Essays and Bipolar Bylines, published in 2010. In it, I touted the virtues of the very compliance I question today. I confidently attributed my recovery to God, a good marriage, a great church, medication, exercise and sleep.
Then I got food poisoning and just couldn’t shake it. My primary care physician’s response was to give me a pro biotic to take for a month and then to hand me a sheet of paper outlining the gluten-free diet he wanted me to follow.
My stomach cleared up and then some. I became regular after a few days and as I continued to deny bread, pasta, cake, cookies and crackers my forgetfulness and confusion began to clear.
Mind you, forgetfulness, confusion, slowness of thought and action were my norm. Inability to track my calendar, family events, to navigate the streets and roads of my small town were legend among my family and friends. I attributed it to my illness and was resigned to the idea that it probably had a lot to do with the meds I took to treat the illness, too.
Could this clarity have anything to do with the pizza I didn’t eat? The choice to refrain from the rolls my husband was enjoying? My lunch choice of gluten-free pasta over the standard wheat noodles I usually cooked up?
No neat conclusion here. I’m going to walk on the treadmill. I’m compliant, after all. Just wondering.
Tags: bipolar, depression, exercise, gluten free, manic, mental illness, recovery
